[sorry no pretty pictures for this review]

Street Fighter IV is here to bring the fighting scene back to its roots.  This installment picks up right after Street Fighter II Super (1993 arcade release).  Some of you gamers were still in diapers when I was challenging my class mates for lunch money. (3rd grade)

Some may say Street Fighter has had an identity crisis after Street Fighter II Super, and I will argue it did.  Let's get into it.

After the @$$kicking intro, I went straight to versus mode with my brother and had a very basic classic Ryu Vs. Ken fight.  Without looking at anything, we both threw hadokens at each other, followed by a mirror front flip and then shoryuken. (I hope I spelled that right) Needless to say, Street Fighter is back.  However, is that a good thing?

This game is pretty much Street Fighter II Super, with 4 more characters, pretty high def graphics, very interesting artstyle, and 3 new fighting dynamics.  The fighting dynamics are the

1) Focus attack, where you can absorb one hit and throw crippling knock down attack (everyone can do it the same way),

2) Super Meter which adds extra attack power behind standard special moves,

3) Ultra Meter aka the revenge meter, which fills up if you are getting your behind kicked allowing you to get revenge with an ultra combo.  There you have it.  That's the game.

I pride myself in being a good gamer, maybe even above average, but this game is effing hard.  If there was a kitten in this game, I would have a hard time fighting it.  Let me give you a quick background on me, I love the Soul Calibur franchise, & 2nd DOA.  I never got into Tekken although I played it, and I always laughed at Mortal Kombat.

Street Fighter IV has a lot of difficulty levels. Easiest, Very Easy, Medium, Hard, Very Hard, Extra Hard.  I can't even fathom what hard would be like when I'm getting tossed around like a bag of crap on fire in the "Very Easy" difficulty, 3 fights in from the boss.  Street Fighter IV is a twitch fighter, I get it.  You're going to have to invest practice time executing special moves and figuring out pre-determined combos for your character to be good.  To be excellent, you're going to need to have full command of the focus system and pull of your super / ultra moves on demand.

The presentation of the game is fantastic.  It's stylized, in your face, motion graphics everywhere, great hype music, and it's just FUN to be in the game.  The game honestly feels like a fight party in a box.  Like the guys at Fight Club are good friends, at a club with a lot of lights, fighting each other for fun with people watching.

Here's my however.  Some of the characters are distracting with their art style.  The new character Rufus, is a ball of fat, with a weird haircut, mustache, and has the most physics in his stomach.  Chun-Li, a sweet heart of the series, has legs the size of red wood tree trunks.  Ryu looks like he lost his cool asian edge, .... everyone has steriod arms or legs... it's just style choice but its distracting because its a little strange.

The fighting gameplay feels limited to mastering timing, twitch, and execution of pre-built moves.  This is very different from the open ended Soul Calibur fighting style, or the "Jet Li" ish fighting in the DOA series.  This game is no joke.  Since you are limited to a strict fighting system, you're going to have to spend hours upon hours figuring out character hit boxes all over again (for veterans) and seeing which moves and attacks have priorities over others, and REMEMBER.

My Final Word: The game is a fight party in a box with warm fuzzy feelings from over 15 years ago.  You'll learn the basics quick but mastering this game will take longer than you'll care for, if you're not going to be hardcore.

P.S.  Every character's story revolves around the Blu-Ray disc movie you get in the Collector's Edition which = $90.  You have to read some fan sites in order to understand what's going on if you don't watch the movie.  I don't like giving number rankings for games so don't bother me too much on what I leave.  You can give or take 2 points depending if you're a fan or not.